


Snow and Dirty Rain

by theragingstorm



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Bittersweet, Depression, Gen, Grief, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Jewish Character, Pregnancy, Sort Of, chance encounters, sad baby bat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 14:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13078866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theragingstorm/pseuds/theragingstorm
Summary: A teenage billionaire meets a circus acrobat — a woman who shouldn’t be able to have any sort of influence on his life.





	Snow and Dirty Rain

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn’t take place in the universe of the Gotham TV show, but I still like to picture David Mazouz as young Bruce. 
> 
> Title from the Richard Siken poem of the same name.

Spring was the last thing on Bruce’s mind that day.

The snows had rolled into Gotham two weeks prior, and the damp cold had seeped in months ago. The powdery white had already been trampled into grays, blending in with the metal and smoke and stone of the rest of the city. The clouds hung low; bringing down the wet cold against one’s chest and bones.

Yet despite these unfavorable conditions, Bruce had ignored Alfred’s recommendations and set out into downtown for a walk.

He would be sixteen in two months. It wasn’t like he needed the butler telling him what to do anymore. He wasn’t his father. No matter how snarkily he phrased himself, Bruce didn’t have to listen to him.

Besides, he couldn’t stay in the Manor for too long, anyway. It was still too big, too echoing, with nobody to fill it up. Even nearly four years later.

So he preferred to exercise, to move about his city.

Bruce huddled into the neck of his expensive black wool coat and moved down the sidewalk. All about him appeared lights.

The cars’ headlights, the neon signs, the massive billboards, all a riot of color. But accompanying it were massive threads of tinsel on the public buildings, decorations in rich shades of red and green. The gray metal was less visible than usual under the twinkling.

His father would’ve loved it. He would’ve cast an eye over the cheery decorations and smiled, the wealthy doctor giving way for just a man excited about Christmas. His mother would’ve indulged her husband, before taking her son home and telling him the Hanukkah story again over a pile of gelt. They would’ve lit the menorah and said the blessings together, then Thomas would’ve encouraged Bruce and Martha to come over for some of Alfred’s exquisite cooking. The whole house would’ve been alive with it all.

Bruce hadn’t lit the menorah since the year they’d died. It was hard to find a reason to celebrate light when there was a numbness and a heavy weight in his chest that never seemed to go away, when his brain still cast pictures of that horrible night whenever he heard anything like a gunshot, even on TV.

He passed by a bunch of posters that had been pasted to a bodega wall, tattered and wet from the winter. Most were illegible, but the newest was only a week old, advertising a circus coming to town. It promised to be quite the spectacle: elephants, clowns, the greatest aerialists in America, maybe even the world.

He thought nothing of it and walked on.

Eventually, he came to the street that took him on to Robinson Park.

The place was nearly emptied out. Slapped over in icy white, icicles dripping nasally from every tree, on a cold damp day to boot, very few families or dog-walkers were brave enough to stand it for more than an hour or two.

He brushed some snow off a bench and sat down to catch his breath. For a few minutes, stared off into the distance, huddled in on himself, his only motion being the rise and fall of his chest and the clouds of steam from his nose.

“Mind if I join you?”

Bruce was snapped out of his reverie.

Standing above him was a woman in her late twenties. She was very beautiful, and something about her reminded him of his mother, which was ridiculous. They were both dark-haired, true, but the resemblance stopped there.

Martha had had silky coffee-brown hair, neatly coiffed. This woman had ebony-black coiled curls, slightly frizzy. Martha had had round black eyes, pale skin, and had been tall and slim. This woman had almond-shaped blue eyes with long lashes, golden brown skin, and was short and compact.

She was also visibly pregnant.

The strange woman, wearing a secondhand sky-blue coat, braced her weight on her heels and rested a wedding-ringed left hand on her swollen belly; smiling patiently.

Bruce realized she was still waiting for an answer.

“No, I don’t mind.”

Her bright smile grew, and she all but collapsed on the seat next to him.

“Thank you,” she proclaimed, turning to face him. “I’m sorry if I’m intruding —”

 _You are, a little bit,_ Bruce thought uncharitably.

“— but I think I may have overshot myself a bit on this walk. I get out of breath so easily these days, and my God, my feet!” She leaned back some more, exhaling hard. “I suppose I’m going to have to take the train back to where we’ve set up, though this subway system doesn’t make a bit of sense to me.”

Despite himself, Bruce picked up on her odd word choice.

“Where you’ve set up?” he echoed.

The woman nodded.

“I’m with the circus that’s in town. Haly’s Circus, have you heard of it?”

He shook his head, encouraging her to keep talking.

_I haven’t exactly had that kind of upbringing. But who knows, maybe knowing about that circus could be useful in the future._

“Well, anyway, I’m one of the acrobats. Or, I was.” She patted her abdomen with faux ruefulness. “Gotta wait till this little guy comes to get back up on the wires.” She then extended her hand, surprising him. “Mary Grayson.”

He shook it with all his cool politeness.

“Bruce Wayne.”

“...You wouldn’t happen to be related to the people whose name’s on that tower a few blocks away, would you?”

Again, he was surprised. She may have been chatty, but she was astute.

“Actually, I own it.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I own the whole company actually.”

“Well.” Mary sat back a bit, quirking her eyebrows. “I’ve never met someone so young who had their own company. And I’ve met a lot of strange people in my line of work.”

“I’m already fifteen,” Bruce said defensively. “And I’ll be sixteen in February. I can handle it.”

“I don’t doubt it.” There was something in her eyes — not pity, sympathy. And curiosity. He realized that even if she hadn’t heard about his parents’ murder — and it had been nationally covered; the Waynes had been incredibly prominent — she knew that no teenager got to own a company by natural causes.

Bruce pulled himself further into his jacket, doing his best to change the subject.

“I think you’d have done better to have met this cop I know: Captain Gordon,” he mumbled. “He’s closer to your age, I think. Plus, his toddler niece is in town.”

A different combination of expressions drifted over Mary’s face.

“Historically, we haven’t done well with cops.” She sighed quietly. “Though I’d like to meet that little girl. This is my first, and I don’t know as much about children as I probably should.”

“Neither do I,” Bruce found himself admitting. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and I haven’t talked to my cousins since —” He realized he was about to say too much again, and shut himself off.

Mary looked out at the snowy park. A pair of young brothers chased a German shepherd into the trees; the only spots of reprieve from the pale expanse of the park.

“Well, the only way to really learn is to get out there and do it, isn’t it?” With some difficulty, she got to her feet. “At least, I’m hoping I’ll be able to do that for my son.” She looked gently at him, and — that. There. That was what his mother had looked like. “And I hope when you have kids someday, you’ll be able to do that too.”

He doubted it. There was too much happening in this city; too much that he would have to handle when he was older and had his plans sorted out. A child couldn’t factor into that.

Besides, what was he thinking? Mary Grayson was nothing like his mother. Too young, too poor, too everything. She and her husband would live long lives flying from wires and her son would probably fly too, when he was old enough. He probably should’ve felt jealous for a day or two, then forgotten about it.

But nonetheless, he didn’t feel jealous. He felt an odd sort of kinship to the acrobat woman’s unborn baby. It was impossible to explain, but he couldn’t shake it.

Maybe he should make it up to her, in some way. She was alone, and in an unfamiliar, dangerous city. It was only right to help.

“Can you tell me where the nearest subway station is?” Mary was asking. “I think I can make it from there.”

Bruce got to his feet too, brushing shards of ice from his coat.

“Actually, I have a counterproposal.”

 

* * *

 

She was more than a decade older than him, and yet she stared in unabashed awe at the lights and decorations around her, not seeming to mind the massive expanses of stone and steel. They stopped by a hot chocolate stand, and when she bought drinks for both of them — no mind that he could’ve bought her entire circus — she smiled at and thanked the man selling the drinks. He did a double take.

“Out-of-towners,” the man mumbled as they walked away.

 _He’s right,_ Bruce thought. _She probably wouldn’t be so bright and friendly if she lived here for a few years._

“You know,” Mary remarked, her face framed by the rising steam from the hot chocolate, “all the people who’ve been traveling longer than me said when we were en route here: ‘You’re gonna hate it there, Mary, Gotham’s dark and upsetting, the buildings are ugly, there’s so much crime, et cetera.’”

“And...you think they were wrong?”

“No, they were right, one of our clowns got her wallet stolen yesterday and our lion tamer was mugged in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. More importantly, the buildings _are_ ugly.”

Bad jokes too? Bruce looked up almost apologetically at a gargoyle on the roof of the public library.

“But bad as it is, I don’t hate it here.” She shrugged. “Call me an optimist.”

“I don’t hate it here too,” Bruce admitted, taking a careful sip of his hot chocolate. It was actually very good; rich and creamy and seasoned with cinnamon. “And I live here.”

“Well, there you go.”

Snow began to fall again as they walked; delicate flakes that melted almost immediately against his skin. Bruce realized that the omnipresent weight in his chest had eased, just a tiny bit.

He shook his head, confused.

The odd pair came to the subway entrance just as their hot chocolate came to an end. The paper cups made their way into the nearest bin.

“Okay, you remember? Take the red line two stops towards Chinatown, then the green three stops towards Park Row, then go down to the third level and take the blue line all the way out to the end, at Westward Bridge. You should see your street from there.”

“I got it the first two times,” she replied, slightly amused. She walked two steps to the top of the stairs, bracing her grip on the handrail. “You’re an unusual kid, Bruce.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“I’m trying to say thank you. Most teenagers wouldn’t do all this for a stranger.”

“You said it yourself: I’m not most teenagers.” He shuffled his feet, the sense of self-consciousness increasing.

“True enough.” Mary gave him one last smile. “I hope my son turns out like you.”

_I hope to God your son doesn’t turn out like me._

He nodded curtly, feeling his cheeks heat up.

“Good bye, Ms. Grayson.”

“Good bye, Bruce. I hope I see you at one of our shows someday.”

And like that, in a flash of color, she was gone. Bruce stood alone at the top of the staircase, feeling the snow prick his exposed skin with tiny points of cold before it melted.

After a few moments standing there, feeling the sense of connection fade to something easy to ignore, he walked down to the end of the street and hailed a taxi. He didn’t think he’d been out nearly long enough for an actual workout, but Alfred would probably want him home soon.

The passing encounter had eased the numbness, but some light was still missing from him, and still to come. The menorah would not go lit for a few more years yet.


End file.
